Thursday, October 07, 2010

Chihara Minori is in the air, on her way to New York for the New York Anime Festival.

This picture was taken at Narita airport at 2:30 pm Thursday, Tokyo time. That was 1:30 am New York time. With a flight probably leaving around 3:15, and a probable flight time of just under 13 hours, she should be arriving just after 3 pm this afternoon, New York time.

At Narita Airport
2010.10.07 Thursday
I've set out for New York on the afternoon flight!!I'm looking forward to lots of things at the New York Anime Festival It's my first time in New York -- what will it be like, I wonder?
I definitely want to see the Statue of Liberty My heart swelling with the promise of many meetings, I'm happily off It's a long flight, but I'll do my best

NOTE: Literally, she says "meet the goddess of freedom," which I now realize is the Statue of Liberty. I liked the "meet" there.

@Anonymous: According to the Great Circle Mapper site, the shortest route from Tokyo to NYC goes up over Alaska and Canada's Arctic coast, then down over the North Woods and eventually over Lake Erie.

13 hours is pretty long, but I thought it would be even longer. It's about 17 hours from LA to Australia, which I've done (fortunately it's mostly in darkness, so you can try to sleep).

Thanks for covering this, Hashi. I was thinking of asking, but I thought you weren't as big a Minorin fan as JimOne. I was actually thinking of attending this, but it's kinda expensive and I have plans for the holidays.

@Andrew -- You're the reason I know about this. You asked in August if I would be covering it, and I put it in my calendar. I'm not sure just how much I can do, but I'll pay attention to her blog and go from there. The only afternoon flight from Narita I could find quickly was a Delta flight that would have arrived in NYC about four hours ago now.

Hashihime

The "Hashihime" or "Bridge Princesses," are characters in the novel The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari 源氏物語）. They are daughters of a disgraced prince, living alone with him in a small house at Uji, outside Kyoto. They are important characters in the last ten chapters of the novel.

The Genji can be considered the first real novel in the history of the world. It was written around 1000 AD by a Japanese court lady known as Lady Murasaki, or Murasaki Shikibu.

I think contemporary Japanese literature, including anime and manga, continues to preserve aspects of the Genji, among them sensitive psychological observation, a general passion for romance, and romantic interest in young girls. The main hero of the thousand-page novel, Prince Genji, had a number of present and former girlfriends living in his palace, and basically abducted his principal wife Murasaki when she was ten, marrying her when she was around 15.

notes

-- all Japanese names are written in Japanese order: surname first, given name second-- I claim no copyright on anything in this blog, unless otherwise stated